Wednesday, November 19, 2003

So, it's not just that we're knocking down
houses of people merely suspected of hosting guerillas in Iraq --
punishing not just them, but their families, in apparent violation of
the Geneva conventions. We now find, buried in this article
on how it really is Iraqis doing all this, and not mysterious foreign
infiltrators, little nuggets like so:

But the strike illustrated what military officials said was a new
twist to their counterinsurgency campaign: attack bomb-making
factories, weapons warehouses, guerrilla meeting places and
insurgents' homes with no warning, using high-altitude bombing or
long-range missile strikes. Officials indicated that it was clear the
general's house was being used as a meeting place.

"This approach gives us more tactical surprise," a military
official said. "They're still using houses and neighborhoods, but
we've been removing sanctuaries and keeping them off balance."

Gosh, I hope we're as sure about these
"bomb-making factories" as we were earlier
about the highly specialized chemical weapons trucks on Powell's satellite imagery.

We can be sure, of course, that we've knocked down a house. And we
also know how much trouble we're causing the guerillas by doing that.
They have to meet in somebody else's house. And they also have to
deal with the costs of training and assimilating a few new recruits.

But this campaign clearly begins to address one need spelled out by
Rumsfeld in that memo from last month -- this campaign clearly lends
itself to a "metric", and a kinder, gentler one than the one made
famous in that last war. How long till we start hearing about the
building count?